This book discusses how Western ideas, knowledge, concepts and practices were imported, adapted and even transformed into varied contexts in East Asia……

The Second Opium War (1856–1860) marks a turning point in the history of the transplantation of Western legal concepts to China. When international law was initially transplanted to China as a new discipline in the mid-nineteenth century, the Chinese literati used it instrumentally as a way of dealing with foreign ‘barbarians’……

At the end of the nineteenth century, China found itself torn between its imperial past and its nation-state future. By the time it became a Republic in 1911, China had to redefine its territory in new national sovereign terms……

It is assumed that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the international developmental financing institutions (IDFIs) recently created in order to support it, are going to challenge the Bretton Woods institutions and, as a consequence, the liberal order, contributing to a global shift in power from the United States to China……